


maybe, you'll think of me

by dealusis



Series: New Vegas OC 'Verse [1]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: memories the kind that make you cry at 3am
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 06:02:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19312108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dealusis/pseuds/dealusis
Summary: Despite his previous reservations about staying in the Vault this long, Francis Bishop is still sitting inside his bunk on the second floor of Vault 76, located deep within the bedrock of West Virginia.





	maybe, you'll think of me

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little ficlet about my Original Character Francis Bishop, who is my FO76 character. More information on him at dealusis.tumblr.com, under his OC profile and his OC tag.

Despite his previous reservations about staying in the Vault this long, Francis Bishop is still sitting inside his bunk on the second floor of Vault 76, located deep within the bedrock of West Virginia.

It wasn’t necessarily that he was  _ scared.  _ In fact, he’s been waiting for this moment to come for nearly his entire life. Trained for it, anyway. Ever since he was locked down here with a small percentage of humanity some maybe, twenty years ago.

Twenty sounded right.

Or was it twenty-five?

It’s hard to tell when you can’t see the sun.

Francis knows, logically, that the air systems had been turned off over four hours ago. The air vent above his bed isn’t doing its usual quiet rattling, its screws worn loose through his tampering as a teenager. He wonders, if he reached his hand back far enough, would he find an old pack of cigarettes? Or a homemade syringe?

The Overseer’s message cuts through his thoughts, loud over the speakers,  _ it’s time to get up, get out there _ .

Francis runs his hand through his greasy hair, softly. He really should have cleaned up last night. Who knows when he may encounter fresh, clean water again. When he’s thirty? Sixty? If he even lives that long. He raises his hands above his head in a deep stretch, allowing his vertebrae to stretch and crack along with the pull of his stiff muscles. He’s beginning to feel the lack of air affecting his brain.

Which might be why he’s feeling doubtful, now. About leaving. Might also be the hangover.

Francis blinks a couple times to clear his sticky eyes and looks around his usual Vault-Tec themed room with a quick glance left and right. His bed partner had left some time ago, he thinks. The bright blue clock on his bedside table is nearly at the 1pm position, alarm seemingly turned off hours before.

He must have slept through his usual alarm, unless his partner, whatever his name was, decided to let him suffocate for his sloppy performance. Francis let out a puff of air, a normally quiet noise amplified by the sheer lack of activity in the normally busy Vault.

Actually, by the sound of it, he’s the only one still here.

Typical, that he isn’t one of the overeager souls looking to lose themselves in the new frontier of wasteland America. His father always said he was too complacent in what life had become, as if he remembered at all what it was like before.

Francis pulls himself out of bed with a grunt and smooths his hand down his wrinkled shirt in contempt. His Vault-Suit hangs from it’s hanger, perfectly ironed and tailored perfectly to his measurements.

In the months leading up to this moment, Vault 76 had never been more active. Which was an accomplishment, because it was always loud, busy, and hot before the promise of freedom and real air. Hundreds of people frantically rushed around to get fitted for their finalized suits and made survival plans using the large map pinned to the wall in Survival Room 01. The Vault children carefully made little blue suits for their cloth dolls with smiles on their faces.

When he was a child, his best friend Beatrix would tell stories to the other kids in the darkest closet on the third floor, a flashlight casting shadows on her face.  _ There’s monsters out there,  _ she would say,  _ if you press your ear to the Vault door you can hear them trying to get inside. _ Francis and the others would dare each other to get as close as possible to the door, when the night watch was half asleep. He remembers getting caught and assigned to table wiping duty for two months.  _ It’s not my fault,  _ Beatrix said after,  _ that you all believed me. _

Francis goes through the practiced motions of getting the suit on and snaps his Pip-Boy onto his wrist, which boots up with a happy little tune. He steps out into the long metal hallway and starts his practiced journey towards the Vault’s exit, passing Mister Handys and picking up provisions left behind by the other occupants.

He hasn’t left the underground since he arrived, when he was still swaddled against his mother’s breast. He doesn’t remember his brother Abel, whom had disappeared before the blast. His parents refuse to talk about him, unless they’d opened a bottle of wine. Supposedly, Abel looked just like his grandfather. Deep brown hair and golden tan skin.  _ A true  _ _ italiàno _ , his mother had sighed.  _ A good boy,  _ his father nods.

In Francis’ opinion, Abel was the luckiest of all of them. His last sight before being pulled into the open arms of God -- the brilliant flames of man, all consuming. When Francis closes his eyes, he could almost feel the warm heat on his face, dragging down his jaw and catching him on the collar.

He no longer remembers the feeling of true sun on his face, or of the breeze through his hair. 

He knows what to be prepared for of course, there may be no sun, no breeze. 

There may not even be a ground to stand on. 

What a ridiculous thought, he’s in the ground now isn't he? So there must be something to stand on up there, he rationalizes, even if it’s stacked up corpses in blue. 

A boy from the Vault, Michael, would laugh at him if he could hear his worrying. Michael laughed easily. He laughed when he choked on cigarette smoke, he laughed when he tripped over the rivets in the metal floors, and he laughed when they fumbled around in the kitchen pantry, Francis’ pants bunched up around his knees, hands braced on a shelf full of canned peaches. 

_ Little rabbit _ , he had called him, his breath coming in hot puffs against Francis’ ear,  _ why are your eyes closed? _ He squeezed Francis’ hip harshly and laughed when he let out a sharp noise and tried to move away from the pain.

Michael wasn’t cruel to him, back then. They were hardly even friends, they never spoke outside of those small trysts. What they had had was temporary, they knew that. There was no room for attachments in the wastes, Francis knew this when he propositioned Michael one Sunday morning, and he knew when he turned down Michael’s offer of alliance one week ago. The Vault-Tec staff had said that they would need each other to help rebuild, but they all knew the truth.

Maybe they’d see each other in the mountains, maybe he’ll turn his gun to him, and call him his little rabbit one more time. The bruise had been there for nearly a week, after.

Nostalgia isn’t  helping Francis’ stomach settle. His mother would have had him drinking the most vile hangover cure if she had stayed longer. It tasted like tomatoes, if tomatoes were grown in Hell.

He briefly remembers one Friday morning, he and his mother dancing past each other with mixing bowls in hand, laughing when they nearly collided, a slow song playing from the record player they had stolen from Recreation Room 12. When Francis grabbed one of her hands to twirl her, she would laugh and say,  _ you’re going to make me drop the dessert _ ,  _ cuore mio! _

Francis lets out a shaky breath and continues down the dim hallways, barely lit by the emergency lighting system. A drop of water hits the floor behind him, and echoes loudly.

His parents had already explained their plan to him, to reach Charleston and retrieve their cache from underneath their Church. Francis was to circle around from Morgantown and send them a correspondence as soon as possible, when he had found Beatrix and established a base of operations. 

Later, he’d realize it was a mistake to let them go off alone.  _ Children are too trusting in their parents _ , his father had joked in his rough Irish accent, his half moon reading glasses perched on his nose,  _ we’re not invincible you know _ . Francis half remembers their conversation, vaguely. Something about before the bombs. A story from his father’s youth.

Francis reaches the decorated bridge, the sunlight coming through the Vault’s open door nearly blinding him. He adjusted his backpack on his shoulders and blinks his eyes hard. In front of him, the blinding white light fades, and reveals something he thought he would never see in his lifetime.

The Appalachian mountains stand tall in the horizon, vast and overwhelming and consumed in white fog. They look different in person. Francis wonders if they’re were tall enough to see the ocean from the top. He never got to see the ocean before. There were trees upon trees upon trees, still sticking straight up as though they had never even been hit by blast he’s built his entire life upon, his entire existence. A flock of large birds fly overhead. Francis isn’t sure what he expected. They told him to be prepared for anything, and nothing at all. At least there’s ground, he notes.

He takes a deep breath.

In his head, he hears Beatrix whisper through her little hands, _ they’re seven feet tall, that’s what my dad told me, big ones, with big teeth.  _

Something lets out a guttural roar in the distance.

Francis tightens his grip on his pack and takes a step forward into the unknown.


End file.
